Wednesday, January 30, 2008

It's bugging me

The government is within touching distance of hitting its MRSA target, but opposition parties have accused ministers of manipulating the data.

NuLabour manipulate data? Surely not...

Latest figures show there were 1,072 cases of the superbug in England from July to September last year.

This approaches the target of half the 1,925 average quarterly 2003-4 figure.

But the Tories and Lib Dems accused ministers of moving the target back so it takes account of the period directly after the £50m deep clean of hospitals.

The latest quarterly figure represents an 18% fall on the previous quarter and comes after steady falls since September 2006. Decreases have also been seen elsewhere in the UK.

Well, NuLabour probably are manipulating the figures—I would be deeply surprised were they not—but surely any decrease in infections, especially in a steady downward trend, is a good thing, regardless?

BOM readers will recall Rose Gibb (see this blog). She's the ex-CEO of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust ("Kent and Snuff It") who presided over the deaths of 90 patients from C difficile. Following a damning enquiry she was exited, but not before the Trust very nearly paid her £400 grand "compensation".

It was a particularly outrageous example of the public sector rewarding failure, and there was a huge public outcry. Commissar Johnson was forced to step in, promising he'd stop it.

Predictably enough he's failed: last week we learned Rose is still getting £75K, a lot more than the C diff victims of Kent and Snuff It will see.

Seventy five fucking grand? For presiding over the deaths of ninety people? Who the hell is negotiating these fucking contracts?

Oh, and what happened to that idea of prosecuting company bosses for corporate manslaughter? Is that still around or does it not apply to public sector workers? This silly bitch should be fighting to stay out of prison, not being rewarded with tons of our cash.

But what do the civil servants care? After all, it's all magic fucking money, that falls from the sky. Or, at the very least, it's not their money. No, it's not: it's ours. It's our fucking money, you bastards.

But the whole thing gets even more farcical.

Even more jaw dropping, she has now set up her own company—Resolve Healthcare Consulting Services—"to tell doctors and administrators how to give a better service to the public".

I find the idea that anyone who knows who she is will actually hire that company.

However, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if we find, somewhere not too far down the line, that the NHS has hired her company as a way of paying her the full compensation (whilst dodging the opprobrium for doing so).

Unbelievable though all this is, there is yet another dimension of ridiculousness. Yes, that's right: it can get worse...

Her partner in this venture is her partner in life, one Mark Rees, "who also quit a senior NHS job with an £170,000 payout amid claims of weak leadership after the trust he ran accumulated debts of £30million."

RESOLVE offers expert skills and knowledge from its people who have substantive NHS chief executive and executive director experience in NHS England and Wales, covering acute and specialist care, community services, mental health services and health authority management.

As I said above, don't be surprised if we find that at least £375,000 of NHS money (£400,000 initially proposed compensation - £75,000 "actual" compensation) finds its way to Resolve Healthcare Consulting Services sometime very soon. As Tyler says, we need to be very vigilant.

And, of course, anyone who can get hold of Resolve Healthcare Consulting Services's first year accounts will get a special pat on the back from your humble Devil...

Would you get a private hospital handing over contracts to a person or company that almost got it fried in the courts? Even if they did, we'd be in a position to avoid them and deny them income as should be the right of every freeborn soul.

"As I said above, don't be surprised if we find that at least £375,000 of NHS money (£400,000 initially proposed compensation - £75,000 "actual" compensation) finds its way to Resolve Healthcare Consulting Services sometime very soon. As Tyler says, we need to be very vigilant."

My schooldays are mercifully long gone, but isn't there something slightly untoward with the arithmetic here? That said, yes both of these people are incompetents - or worse. Wonder what they'll be talking about in the Leather Bottle or the Railway these days, what with her presiding over the death camp and him losing all the cash....